2020/12/22 by Dolev Bluvstein, Ahmed Omran, Harry Levine +12 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.abg2530
published as Science 371, 1355-1359 (2021) · Supplementary materials at the end
arxiv created 2020/12/22 · arxiv updated 2021/03/30
Controlling non-equilibrium quantum dynamics in many-body systems is an outstanding challenge as interactions typically lead to thermalization and a chaotic spreading throughout Hilbert space. We experimentally investigate non-equilibrium dynamics following rapid quenches in a many-body system composed of 3 to 200 strongly interacting qubits in one and two spatial dimensions. Using a programmable quantum simulator based on Rydberg atom arrays, we probe coherent revivals corresponding to quantum many-body scars. Remarkably, we discover that scar revivals can be stabilized by periodic driving, which generates a robust subharmonic response akin to discrete time-crystalline order. We map Hilbert space dynamics, geometry dependence, phase diagrams, and system-size dependence of this emergent phenomenon, demonstrating novel ways to steer entanglement dynamics in many-body systems and enabling potential applications in quantum information science.